What3words

History

Founded by Chris Sheldrick, Jack Waley-Cohen, Mohan Ganesalingam, and Michael Dent, what3words launched in July 2013. Sheldrick and Ganesalingam originally conceived the idea after Sheldrick struggled to get equipment and bands to event locations on time due to inadequate addressing while working as a concert organizer. The company was incorporated on March 5, 2013 and a patent application for the core technology filed on April 19, 2013.

In November 2013 what3words raised $500,000 of seed funding, and in March 2014 the company raised a second seed round of $1,000,000. On November 3, 2015, what3words closed a $3.5 million Series A funding round led by Intel Capital, with Li Ka-shing's Horizons Ventures participating. On June 29, 2016, what3words closed a $8.5 million Series B round led by Aramex.

Design principles

What3words uses a grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3 metres by 3 metres. Each square has been given a three-word English address. What3words has named the 17 trillion squares on land with three words in various other languages. As of December 2016, w3w addresses (as well as web and iOS app user interface) are available in Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish; the iOS app also supports Swahili (Kiswahili). With announced plans for a total of 25 languages, the company targeted for the end of 2016: Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Thai. The company has also mentioned Greek, various languages of Nigeria and India, including Bengali, Farsi, Hindi and Urdu.

Each what3words language uses a wordlist of 25,000 words (40,000 in English, as it covers the sea as well as land). The lists go through multiple automated and human processes before being sorted by an algorithm that takes into account word length, distinctiveness, frequency, and ease of spelling and pronunciation. Homophones and variant spellings are treated to minimise any potential for confusion, and offensive words are removed.

The what3words algorithm actively shuffles similar-sounding three-word combinations around the world to enable both human and automated error-checking. The result is that if a three-word combination is entered slightly incorrectly and the result is still a valid w3w reference, the location will be so far away from the user's intended area that it will be immediately obvious to both a user and an intelligent error-checking system.

The what3words system uses a proprietary algorithm in combination with a limited database, meaning that the core technology is contained with a file around 10 MB in size. What3words originally sold "OneWord" addresses, which were stored in a database for a yearly fee, but this feature has been canceled.

The main claimed advantage of what3words is memorability and unambiguous nature of words for most everyday and non-technical uses.

Disadvantages and clones

Supporters of open standards denounce the what3words system for being controlled by a private business and the software for being copyrighted and thus not freely usable. The fact that similar addresses are purposefully far away from each other is also seen by some as a disadvantage. What3words reserves the right to change their list of words and will not be responsible for the consequences. Inspired by the idea, there are free clones, such as what3fucks, that also actually try to improve upon the technology. The square size is fixed, limiting location accuracy to 3 metres. The grid is two-dimensional, so the addressing scheme does not distinguish between floors in a building. The system only supports a few languages, although all languages cover the entire world's land areas.

Awards